An Interactive Introduction to WebGL: Educators Forum SIGGRAPH 2020

Abstract

1 AN INTERACTIVE INTRODUCTION TO WEBGL For more than 15 years OpenGL and its derivatives have been the most widely used APIs for creating interactive computer graphics applications across all major platforms. Their uses span virtually all application areas and reveal the most up-to-date features of modern graphics hardware. Over the past four years there has been extraordinary interest in WebGL, the JavaScript implementation of OpenGL ES 2.0. Applications developed using the WebGL run in all major browsers. Programs can be hosted remotely, downloaded using a URL, and run locally, and still take advantage of all a system’s local resources, in particular its GPU. In addition, applications can be integrated with other Web content and libraries. Higher level APIs such as three.js have been built on top of WebGL. This course provides an accelerated introduction to WebGL. Our goal is to present participants with the capabilities of the API and help them navigate the plethora of available APIs. We will present simple coding examples using WebGL. Although we do not expect participants will know all the functionality of the API after a few hours of the course, we expect that they will leave knowing its capabilities and how to start on the path of creating their own applications. This version of the course—introductory OpenGL courses have been presented at most SIGGRAPHs and SIGGRAPH Asia’s for over 15 years—will have a significant focus on using shaders to make full use of the GPU through the WebGL 2.0’s shaders. WebGL application programs allow the application to access the GPU directly, through the use of buffers and shaders. Although most attendees at recent courses have some familiarity with OpenGL/WebGL, many of them are still users of older versions of the API and others see the API only indirectly through a high-level API, such as three.js.